Review by Lee Halvorsen ·
On February 24, 2022, Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its neighbor and former ally. Byron Smith was there and for the rest of that year he immersed himself and his camera into the lives and the deaths and the hopes of the Ukrainian community. His mostly black and white images ooze emotions and bring a stark sense of the tragic reality of war, violence, and brutality onto the pages of the book. This book is more than a documentary of events and tragedies, it’s collage of instances projecting sorrow, loss, death, horror…but all held together by the will of the people and their positive determination and hope. All captured in these 192 pages from his months of dangerous outings, daring gatherings, all with perfectly timed shutter snaps.
Smith’s images bring the best and the worst of his harrowing, months long journey through Ukraine after Russia’s February 2022’s full-scale invasion. His book is a heart-breaking, gut-wrenching testament to the human experience…with an undercurrent of hope.
The images are not in chronological but rather, I think, in the order that makes sense when there’s so much chaos around…an arc of relative peacefulness to the tense inevitability of conflict; an arc that’s repeated again and again. For instance, Smith captured a couple sitting on a bench next to a river in Chernihiv who were focused on each other despite wailing air-raid sirens, and then later he introduces us to Benia who is kissing her boyfriend Sergey goodbye as he leaves to join the combat. He was killed just weeks later.
There is an empty, quiet city square with a damaged statue of poet Taras Shevchenko who wrote the poem “Testament,” inspiring the name of Smith’s book. On the following page, a gravedigger standing with his hands over his eyes in the midst of graves following Russian massacres of Ukrainians. The pace, the tempo of the book continues throughout…normal activities (but in ever deteriorating environments) and then to the shock of seeing families torn apart by the violence and destruction of the invader force.
A family birthday party celebration and getting new ink (below) reflect the day-to-day existence that civilians and fighters alike face. The “normal” interspersed with the terror…night-time raids, medical trauma, and sudden, crashing death. The images Smith made are very sensory: the texture, the context, the people’s emotion, the smells, the sounds, the life, the death. Telling of this story like a tragic opera.
Throughout his story he found bright spots of hope and unity, many at unusual times and circumstances. Teens getting together to explore and talk on top of a gutted tank, below. A soldier singing with the radio in a basement. People coming together to clear the rubble from shelled homes. People sunning on the Odesa Boardwalk, despite the mines, last image below. Smith artfully captured the balancing point between terror and hope, destruction and rescue, good and evil.
Smith’s dangerous journey peeks into the full spectrum of emotion, from a young couple on Skateboarding Day, peaceful, relaxed, hopeful, to the bottomless pit of grief from the loss of a husband.
Included in the book is an insightful essay by Kyiv Independent reporter Igor Kossov who collaborated with Smith on frontline dispatches. Kossov wrote about the “rush of pointless cruelty and desperation that…was disorienting.” But he found more hopeful, inspiring stories in the people of Ukraine after the invasion. He cites Smith’s images as a testament that bears witness to how the Ukrainians suffered and yet still pulled together during the Russian invasion.
This is a moving piece; Smith finds the bedlam and then the people who are trying to make things right. His images are powerful, sensory captures of people and places that have been devastated by the Russian invaders. He senses the power of the people and brings their lives through his eye onto his sensor and then to the page. Even the form of the book, like a reporter’s journal, invites introspection. A must read.
An internationally recognized photographer, Byron Smith’s work captures causes and effects of conflict and migration
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Lee Halvorsen is a visual artist and author.
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TESTAMENT ’22: A Visual Road Diary Through a War Zone, Byron Smith
Photographer: Byron Smith, born and resides in Brooklyn, NY.
Publisher: Verlag Kettler, Dortmund, Germany, copyright 202
Essay: Igor Kossov
Illustrations: Karolina Gulshani
Paintings: Victor Onyshchenko
Text: English
Hardbound with tipped-in cover image, 192 pages, paginated, 18 x 24.4cm, Munken Lynx 120gm paper, with essay, illustrations, paintings and index. Production by Druckerei Kettler, Bônen, Germany. ISBN: 978-3-98741-139-7
Book Design: Mattias Amnäs
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Articles and photographs published in the PhotoBook Journal may not be reproduced without the permission of the PhotoBook Journal staff and the photographer(s). All images, texts, and designs are copyright of the authors and publishers.
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